Movies: Eclipse, The Second Time Around

Published 12:32 pm, Sunday, September 29, 2013

Movies: Eclipse, The Second time Around

Written by Virginia Florey

Actually the title is misleading. I have seen Eclipse a lot more than twice but last night after spending all day on the computer I wanted to relax and turned TV on. And there was Eclipse, the third movie in The Twilight Saga written by Stephenie Meyer. So I thought I would give my opinion about it the second time around and I find I still agree with my first review written in July, 2010.

Why Summit Entertainment made the decision to hire David Slade to direct this third book about the love story of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan still remains more of a mystery than ever. Now I have Bill Condon’s direction of Breaking Dawn Part I and Breaking Dawn Part II to compare Eclipse with. Eclipse was bad enough when I compared it to Twilight and New Moon but after seeing the great job Bill Condon did with the fourth book of the Twilight Saga, Eclipse is so bad I’m surprised we Twilight fans were loyal enough to put it in the block buster category of films.

Released June 30, 2010 its opening weekend took in $64,832,191. Eclipse ran in theatres until October 21, 2010 bringing in a total of $698,491,347. DVD sales totaled 9,847,792 units sold which brought in another $168,769,121.

After hitting the jackpot with Twilight and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, you would think that Summit Entertainment would have chosen a director who would do justice to Stephanie Meyer’s Eclipse. They didn’t. They chose David Slade. I didn’t think any book could be slaughtered as badly as David Slade managed to do with Eclipse, the third novel in the Twilight Saga.

Choosing a new director for each book seemed to work out ok for Twilight directed by Catherine Hardwick and New Moon directed by Chris Weitz. But who selected David Slade to do Eclipse? When I first heard that he had been selected I thought I was slipping up on movie directors. I had never heard of David Slade. When I googled him, I was astonished to find out that he had started out doing music videos and then was given a budget of a million dollars to do a movie called Hard Candy which was introduced at the 2005 Sundance Movie Festival. Besides that movie he had done 30 Days of Night and Do Geese See God. That was it. His total experience, so of course, let’s let him direct a movie franchise that has become a phenomena all over the world.

Eclipse is the continuing story of Edward, Bella and Jacob with Stephanie Meyer doing a great job of writing dialog and making the three young people caught in a love triangle believable. Maybe the movie tried to cover too much and parts that should have been included were omitted for some reason. The whole thing fell apart so quickly on the screen that I can’t even remember all of the bad parts. They just seemed to run into each other after awhile.

Edward who in the books is an intelligent young man is made to look like an idiot in his scenes with Jacob who suddenly under David Slade’s direction becomes the All-Wise Jacob. Bella who is conflicted about loving her soul-mate Edward versus her good friend Jacob in the book, comes across as an arrogant, flippant teen-ager who makes you wonder why either Edward or Jacob think they want to spend the rest of their lives with her?

Take this scene, for example. Jacob confronts Edward and Bella who are in the parking lot of the Forks High School and he tells Bella that Edward lied to her to get her away from Forks because Alice saw Victoria (the bad vampire) was coming for her. Just to make sure that we the audience who are too dumb to know who Jacob is, the background music becomes throbbing and menacing as Jacob appears. Bella looks accusingly at Edward and then hops onto Jacob’s motorcycle and they buzz off triumphantly. Now the camera shows Edward standing there, helpless and impotent apparently. It makes you wonder why Bella loves him more than Jacob?

The budget for Eclipse was a healthy $68 million. So what happened to the ridiculous wigs most of the cast had to wear? Bella’s was bad enough but Rosalie’s looked like it was a Halloween wig. The comparison between the way the stars looked in New Moon and then Eclipse was so stark it makes you wonder if somebody decided they could skimp on the budget. The sophisticated and beautifully attired Cullen coven in New Moon is reduced to denim jackets, flannel shirts, and generally unattractive outfits. It surprised me to see that Tish Monaghan who did the costumes for New Moon also did the costumes for Eclipse.

Make up mainly was done by Ceilidh Dunn and Leslie Graham. Again, I’m assuming that director David Slade and the producers had their say in all of this.

Howard Shore did the music. Thankfully they hired Carter Burwell for Breaking Dawn Part I and Breaking Dawn Part II. Carter Burwell also did the music for the first Twilight movie.

So far the three young stars who have made the Twilight pictures a mega phenomena seem to have their feet on the ground as far as their sudden fame is concerned. In interviews and red carpet appearances they are still gracious, humble and grateful for their fans’ devotion.. Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner did other movies in between the publicity tours for Eclipse. When Eclipse was being heavily promoted, Entertainment Weekly had an interview with Rob, Kristen and Taylor and you could see what a difference it makes when you sincerely like your co-stars in a movie.

The sad part about all of this is that few people are going to blame David Slade. Who pays attention to the director? I thought maybe the blame would fall on Rob, Kristen and Taylor but it didn’t. After making Cosmopolis under the guidance of David Cronenberg in 2012 Rob hit the big time. Taylor Lautner made the movie Abduction which did poorly at the box office and is now currently filming a movie in New York. Kristen Stewart made three other movies, all independent, low budget ones and just completed Camp X-Ray and is almost done with Sils Marie being filmed in Germany and Switzerland.

The fan base for Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner have continued to support the three stars in spite of Eclipse. In November a Twilight retrospective is being offered to Twilight fans. All five movies, special features and behind the scenes movie clips will be part of the package. It is being released to celebrate the first showing of Twilight in 2008.